"At a cafe table in Lahore, a Pakistani man converses with a stranger. As dusk deepens to dark, he begins the tale that has brought him to this fateful meeting...Among the brightest and best of his graduating class at Princeton; Changez is snapped up by an elite firm and thrives on New York and the intensity of his work. And his infatuation with fragile Erica promises entree into Manhattan society on the exalted footing his own family once held back in Lahore. For a time, it seems as though nothing will stand in the way of Changez's meteoric rise to personal and professional success: the fulfilment of the immigrant's dream. But in the wake of September 11, he finds his position in the city he loves suddenly overturned, and his budding relationship with Erica eclipsed by the reawakened ghosts of her past. And Changez's own identity is in seismic shift as well, unearthing allegiances more fundamental than money, power, and perhaps even love."
Saturday, 30 August 2008
REVIEW OF DREAMS OF MY FATHER BY BARACK OBAMA
"Forget Barack Obama. Forget the face, the smile, the presidential candidate. This is the self-examination of a 33-year-old crying out on every page, 'Who am I?' and finding an extraordinary answer.
Barack Obama's memoir, written long before his political career began, is a remarkable story of one man's search for his identity.The son of a black transient Kenyan father and an 18 year old white American Hawaiian mother, Obama was only two years old when his father walked out on the family. Many years later, Obama receives a phone call from Nairobi: his father is dead. This sudden news inspires an emotional odyssey for Obama, determined to learn the truth of his father's life and reconcile his divided inheritance.Written at the age of thirty-three, 'Dreams from my Father' is an unforgettable read. It illuminates not only Obama's journey, but also our universal desire to understand our history, and what makes us the people we are.
Obama writes truthfully and compellingly, without the fear of condemnation and ridicule that plagues most political biographies. The presidential hopeful makes many bold revelations about his personal life -- including a drug habit. He tells of his quest to find a place for himself in the world being the son of a white woman and a black man in America."
REVIEW OF DEVIL MAY CARE
"Just as every small boy once wanted to be Bond, every fortysomething novelist must, surely, want to have been asked to create him. So in book-writing circles, there must have been little angry hisses when literary lion Sebastian Faulks was given the dream job of resurrecting James Bond, after so many hack writers have failed abysmally down the years.
Full backing of the Bond estate, to celebrate the centenary of Ian Fleming's birth, and the biggest marketing push since the last Harry Potter; yet Faulks says he wrote it in six weeks. Had to be persuaded to do it, had to be begged. Over long lunches. And now can't wait to get back to 'real' writing. Goodness, how some jealous souls must have wanted him to fail with a clatter.
He doesn't. Not even close. Daggers should be withdrawn. It's good. Which is to say it's better than it could have been. It is not, however, that good. Faulks has done in some ways an absolutely sterling job. He has resisted pastiche. (And surely no pastiche could ever match the simple opening brilliance of Alan Coren's parody about elderly spies: 'Bond tensed in the darkness and reached for his teeth.')"
BOOK REVIEW OF BREAKING DAWN BYSTEPHENIE MEYER
"Don't be confused by comparisons with Harry Potter in the media coverage of this book and make the mistake of buying it for a 10-year-old. It is about sexual desire: specifically, sex with a vampire. This has certain disadvantages. Vampires have to hold back when they make love to humans, or they hurt them; the book's consummations entail ravaged bedheads, chewed pillows and scraps of black lace. The act is not explicit, but the before and after are knowing.
The couplings unite 18-year-old Bella Swan and her bronze-haired, golden-eyed new vampire husband, Edward Cullen, 100 years old, but frozen at a supremely buff 17. Earlier volumes in this series, Twilight, New Moon, and Eclipse, set up Bella's dilemma: now she has decided to marry Edward and be with him for ever, which means giving up her humanity to become a vampire. Also: being childless, and tempted for a while to drink the blood of old friends and family, not at first feeling sexual desire (a bad one) and, worst of all, forgoing the relationship many fans were hoping for with Edward's rival Jake, a swarthy werewolf, Heathcliff to Bella's Cathy."
BOOK REVIEW OF THE RETURN BY VICTORIA HISLOP
VICTORIA HISLOP'S FIRST NOVEL, The Island, was a phenomenon: a story of love and leprosy in wartime Crete, it dominated the bestseller lists for eight weeks, caught the fancy of Richard and Judy and sold a million copies in the UK. It is notoriously difficult for a second novel to recapture the success of a storming debut. The Return is Hislop's attempt to show it can be done.
Admirers of The Island will notice striking similarities between that and its successor. Each concerns a young woman, crossed in love and with an enigmatic family background, who goes on holiday to the Mediterranean only to find herself drawn into a complicated back story, the denouement to which is a revelation about her own past.
The young woman on this occasion is Sonia Cameron, daughter of kindly, nondescript Jack Haynes and his wife, Mary, who died of multiple sclerosis when Sonia was 16, a decade before Sonia's marriage to her much older banker husband, James, with whom she now resides in Wandsworth, in genteel domestic alienation. James has recently taken to the bottle, in a posh sort of way: among the causes of his discontent are Sonia's failure to produce a son, her newly-acquired interest in salsa dancing, and the fact that she proposes to pursue her hobby on a jaunt to Spain with her rackety old schoolfriend, Maggie."
